Wide area data services vendor Riverbed Technology will today release version 5 of its Riverbed Optimisation System (RiOS) for its Steelhead Appliances.

The firm said that the updates would boost Exchange 2007 and web application performance, while it also announced phase 1 of the RiOS Services Platform (RSP), which will allow third party vendors to run their software on the Steelhead Appliances.

Riverbed's European marketing and alliances senior director Mark Lewis announced the updates, saying, "We're the first vendor to optimise Exchange 2007 using application specific modules." He added that RiOS 5.0 would also give IT managers better options for implementing Quality of Service (QoS) controls on their WAN.

"You could allocate a specific amount of bandwidth to your London office, but also specify the breakdown of that bandwidth – 20 per cent for VoIP, 30 per cent for CRM traffic, and the rest for other applications, for example" he explained.

Riverbed and unified threat management vendor Fortinet announced an alliance to enable their channel partners to sell to each others customers, a strategy, " Delivering complementary best-of-breed security and application acceleration solutions," said Riverbed.

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